Tunneling with SSH

Choosing the Desktop Terminal

Platforms

Linux, Unix, Solaris. Linux supports SSH. To connect using SSH, see the "Tunneling Using Cygwin" section below.

Macintosh

In important regards, procedures for tunneling with a Mac client terminal resemble those for Windows clients. Mac users can download and install any number of free or for-fee terminals, the most popular being MacSSH, which is characteristically easy to use, is free, and offers superior performance for SSH1 connections.

NiftyTelnet 1.1 SSH, a fast and easy-to-use telnet and SSH1 client is also free. It supports effortless scp (secure copying), as well.

Mac OS X, based on FreeBSD and the Mach 3 kernel, has SSH built in and is constantly updated. You can also obtain and use F-Secure SSH, to create a desktop terminal allowing you to tunnel to the CVS server. For SSH1, you will want F-Secure SSH v.1.02; v.2.1 is for SSH2 connections only--i.e., those requiring encrypted certificates, or keys.

Windows

If you are using Windows (NT or 9x or 2K), then you can use SecureCRT, F-Secure SSH, or Cygwin. Cygwin, from Cygnus Solutions, provides a nearly full Unix environment on your desktop.

In contrast, SecureCRT and F-Secure SSH only provide user-friendly terminals, i.e., they don't pretend to emulate a Unix environment. Both F-Secure SSH and SecureCRT cost money ($100 for SecureCRT, $150 for F-Secure SSH), although a free, 30-day trial version is available for each. Of all, Cygwin has the added value of not just being free and very powerful, but also open source and constantly improved upon.